Exploring Greek EFL Teachers’ Resilience

This paper explores the resilience exhibited by 169 Greek English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers. A quantitative approach was employed to examine Greek EFL teachers’ resilience in relation to demographic, occupational and school/class characteristics. Data were collected by means of the Teacher Resilience Scale (Daniilidou & Platsidou, 2018). The demographic, occupational and school/class characteristics of the participants were related to a number of specific facets of resilience including social skills, peer support, and persistence among others. The results in the majority of the parameters examined suggests that EFL teachers’ resilience is not affected by demographic, occupational and school/class characteristics. We suggest that the findings of this research can be used to inform the development of targeted interventions towards sustaining and building up EFL teachers’ resilience.

. Furthermore, as Gu and Day (2013) have argued, resilience is a construct which is influenced by situations, circumstances, and the environment, and involves far more than inherent characteristics or internal traits and as a result "all individuals-resilient or otherwise-show fluctuations over time within particular adjustment domains" (Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000, p. 551).
In the field of education, although numerous studies have been conducted regarding the defining characteristics of resilient students and youth in the last three decades (Howard & Johnson, 1999, 2000a, 2000b, it is not until recently that resilience has been gaining currency in seeking to explore what enables teachers to adjust to challenging situations, withstand hardships, and develop strategies to respond positively in adverse circumstances. Gu and Day (2013) define teacher resilience as the teacher's capacity to bounce back despite the adversities and the unforeseeable conditions they are called to face on a daily basis. Several researchers have identified resilient teachers as those who derive satisfaction from their work, respond positively in stressful in-class situations, and demonstrate effective strategies for handling difficult situations and/or students (Stanford, 2001;Tait, 2008). Kostoulas and Lämmerer (2018) argue that resilience can be conceptualised as emerging within a resilience system which encompasses three clusters of interrelating constructs, namely, inner strengths, external support structures, and learned strategies.
In addition, Howard and Johnson (2004) maintain that resilient teachers exhibit a sense of pride and fulfilment, possess behaviour management skills, are able to restrain negative emotions, and empathise with difficult students. Thus, it can be concluded that teacher resilience refers to the process of, capacity for, and outcome of positive adaptation as well as ongoing professional commitment and growth in the face of challenging circumstances. Resilience is shaped by individual, situational and broader contextual characteristics that interrelate in dynamic ways to provide risk (challenging) or protective (supportive) factors (Wosnitza et al., 2014, in Peixoto, Wosnitza, Pipa, Morgan, & Cefai, 2018).
These factors, some of which are explored in this study, will be presented in brief in the following sections.

Risk and protective factors
Teacher resilience is susceptible to an array of individual and contextual risk factors. Regarding individual risk factors, teachers' low self-esteem, negative selfbeliefs, and lack of motivation and confidence (Day, 2008;Kitching, Morgan,& O'Leary, 2009), their difficulty in seeking help from others (Flores, 2006;Jenkins, Smith,& Maxwell, 2009), and a perceived discrepancy between personal beliefs and actual practices (Flores, 2006) are the most frequently mentioned. In respect to contextual risk factors, class management, unsupportive leadership, lack of resources, and problematic relationships with students' parents and/or colleagues have been reported as the most persistent sources of stress for teachers and a challenge to their resilience (Beltman et al., 2011;Castro et al., 2010;Gibbs & Miller, 2014).

Related research
In the Greek context, the focus of a growing number of studies lies on whether and the extent to which teachers are resilient or not, the impact of the economic crisis on their resilience, and the role that demographic and occupational characteristics can play (e.g., Botou et al., 2017;Brouskeli et al., 2018;Daniilidou, 2018;Siourla, 2018).
In regard to age, a number of studies show that this is not a decisive factor for teachers' resilience (Brouskeli et al., 2018;Daniilidou, 2018;Siourla, 2018) or preservice teachers' resilience (Kostoulas & Lämmerer, 2018). However, in contrast, Botou et al. (2017, p. 148) found that, "[o]lder and with more years of service teachers predominate in resilience" and the same is reported in research conducted by Zografou (2016) and Velesioti, Kotrotsiou, Gouva and Andreou (2018). In nonteaching contexts, older people have also been reported to exhibit higher levels of resilience as well (Demakakos, Netuveli, Cable, & Blane, 2008;Gooding, Hurst, Johnson, & Tarrier, 2012;Wagnild, 2016). Since age is closely related to experience in most cases, similar findings have been indicated by Zografou (2016), Velesioti et al. (2018), Koudigeli (2017) and Pearce and Morrison (2011), who all argue that resilience correlates with the years of teaching experience. Velesioti et al. (2018) and Koudigeli (2017), in particular, claimed that teachers with more than fifteen years of teaching experience tend to be more resilient. In an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) context, Estaji and Rahimi (2014) found that highly experienced teachers appear to be more resilient, while Kostoulas and Lämmerer (2018), in a pre-service teachers' context, suggested slightly higher levels of resilience for participants with some kind of teaching experience. Yet, the opposite was reported in research conducted regarding other stressful occupations, such as police officers, who showed a decline of resilience as the years of service advance (Balmer, Pooley, & Cohen, 2014;Prati & Pietrantoni, 2010). In sum, it remains unclear whether gaining experience and advancing age may both or separately contribute to or diminish resilience.
With reference to other demographic characteristics, the findings are likewise contradictory. For example, in relation to the effect of marital status, Daniilidou (2018) maintains that teachers who are in a relationship exhibit higher levels of resilience, whereas Siourla (2018) suggests the opposite. Furthermore, although the majority of the research indicates that teachers' resilience is not affected by their academic qualifications (Botou et al., 2017;Daniilidou, 2018;Siourla, 2018;Zografou, 2016), Brouskeli et al. (2018) reports the opposite. In addition, Brouskeli et al. (2018) and Zografou (2016) advocate for the effect of the urbanisation level of the school on teachers' resilience arguing that teachers in urban schools, especially in high need areas, showed lower levels of resilience than those working in semi-urban and residential ones in agreement with research conducted in foreign school contexts (Brunetti, 2006;Castro et al., 2010;Yonezawa, Jones, & Singer 2011). Finally, Botou et al. (2017 report that working in low-income schools affectsteachers' resilience negatively (see also Daniilidou, 2018).
In sum, it becomes apparent that the role of demographics on how resilience is experienced is unclear with mixed and even contradictory findings in similar or different contexts. In light of this, our research aims to explore the relationship that demographic and occupational characteristics may have in relation to EFL teachers' resilience. Understanding the social and personal context of individuals is important to appreciating the resilience teachers display and the kinds of support they may require.

Design
Our study seeks to explore whether Greek EFL teachers' resilience is affected by: • demographic characteristics, such as gender, age, marital status, academic background, and years of teaching experience • their occupational status, and specifically if they teach in the private or the public sector, and, in the case of the latter, if they serve as permanent or substitute teachers in primary or secondary education • school and class characteristics, relating to the area where the schools/private language institutes (frontistiria) are situated, the number of classes taught, and the number of students per class.
These parameters are investigated through the prism of the four factors emerging from the Teacher Resilience Scale (Daniilidou & Platsidou, 2018; see below).

Instruments
Greek EFL teachers' resilience was explored through a questionnaire including questions about demographic information, the Teacher Resilience Scale (TRS) (Daniilidou & Platsidou, 2018) as well as questions relating to the Greek EFL context. The questionnaire (see Appendix I), which was forwarded to the target population exclusively in electronic form, was piloted with the help of nine EFL teachers before being administered to the participants. Overall, all the participants of the piloting phase commented that the questionnaire was well-structured and could be completed easily and quickly. However, some points for consideration were raised by some of the participants, mainly relating to the TRS. More specifically, two participants expressed the opinion that the use of "sometimes" in three of the statements of the Likert-type questions may bias the respondents' answers, one participant argued that using negation in the statement of a Likert-type question may be puzzling, while other participants were unsure about the interpretation of the word "peers". These queries were communicated to the creators of the TRS (Daniilidou & Platsidou, 2018) and Dr Daniilidou provided useful clarifications and suggestions for minor adaptations.
The TRS (Daniilidou & Platsidou, 2018), included in our questionnaire, comprises 26 items and aims to assess four dimensions of teachers' resilience, namely, teachers' "Personal Competences and Persistence" (9 items), their "Spiritual Influences" (3 items), "Family Cohesion" (7 items) as well as "Social Skills and Peer Support" (7 items). The TRS assesses "the prevailing internal or external protective factors that can help teachers overcome the adversities in the school context" (Daniilidou & Platsidou, 2018, p. 32). According to its creators, no other existing scales address both internal and external factors that can determine teacher resilience.

Participants
169 EFL teachers working in either the public or the private sector in Greece took part in this study. The questionnaire was posted on popular Facebook pages addressed to Greek EFL teachers and sent via email to EFL teachers all over Greece utilising a Yahoo group with a large number of postgraduate EFL teachers. Following snowball sampling, recipients were also requested to further forward the questionnaire to any EFL teacher who fitted the requirements and was willing to participate in our research. The majority of participants were female (n=158) (93.49%), while male EFL teachers (n=11) represented 6.51% of the total sample. Although the representation of male participants in our research is low, it actually appears representative of the small number of male EFL teachers in Greece compared to their female colleagues (for official demographic data see Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT), 2019).
Τhe demographic data gathered as regards the participants' gender, age, marital status, academic status, and years of teaching experience are presented in Table 1. The data concerning the occupational, school and class characteristics of the participants are reported in Table 2. significant (x 2 (300) = 2540,21, p = .000) suggesting that it was possible to proceed with the analysis on this set of data (see Appendix II).
The extraction of communalities indicated that all but one variable (TRS10) shared some common variance with other variables. The item 'Sometimes I have to act on a hunch' (TRS10) was eliminated since it failed to load on any of the factors.
An initial analysis run to obtain eigenvalues for each factor in the data revealed four 'components' or 'factors' with eigenvalues over Kaiser's criterion of 1. The decision on the number of factors to be extracted was guided by theory as well as the analysis of the data with a view to detecting the number of factors which yields the most interpretable results. The four-factor solution, which explained the 62,132%of the total variance, can be also well justified by the scree-plot (see Appendix II). Finally, a PCA of the remaining 25 items was conducted using orthogonal varimax rotation. The factor loading pattern matrix with the loadings of the variables in four distinct factors is displayed in Table 3. Factor analysis verified that the factor labels proposed by Daniilidou and Platsidou (2018)  Competences and Persistence (9 items) with α= .87 also indicated high internal consistency while the factor Spiritual Influences (2 items) had moderate consistency with an α= .70.

The demographic and employment characteristics of EFL teachers in relation to their resilience.
In the results presented in the following subsections, the first factor represents Social Skills and Peer Support, the second Personal Competences and Persistence, the third Family Cohesion, and the fourth Spiritual Influences.
Gender. An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare the four protective factors that frame EFL teachers' resilience with the participants' gender.
Analysis revealed non-significant differences in the scores for male and female EFL teachers with reference to Factor 1, Social Skills and Peer Support, t (167) Tables 4 and 5).

EFL teachers' resilience and their occupational status
Public and Private sector. No statistically significant differences were indicated concerning each of the four factors and the sector of their employment.
Analysis with independent-samples t-test revealed non-significant difference in the scores for the participants who work in the private and the public sector with reference to Factor 1, Social Skills and Peer Support,t (163)

EFL teachers' resilience and school and class characteristics
Number of classes taught. No statistically significant differences were found among the four factors and the number of classes taught by the participants. A One-Way ANOVA revealed no statistically significant differences between the three groups (i.e., teaching 1-5 classes, 6-10 classes or >10 classes the school year the research was conducted) in terms of Factor

Number of students per class.
No statistically significant differences were found among the four factors and the number of students per class. A One-Way ANOVA revealed no statistically significant differences between the three groups (i.e., teaching classes with fewer than 10 students, between 10 and 20 students and 21 or more students) in terms of psychology (e.g., Seligman, 2011). Resilience is also a construct which has been related to positive psychology and wellbeing in several studies (e.g., Etherington, Hanks, & Alshehri, 2020). Teachers' wellbeing is critically important in education not only because of the connection between teacher wellbeing and student performance (Bajorek, Gulliford, & Taskila, 2014) but also because "the well-being of both teachers and learners are intricately connected" (Mercer et al., 2016, p. 224). In terms of how to work on enhancing wellbeing, language teachers' social and emotional intelligence are believed to be core competencies which can contribute to wellbeing (Mercer & Gkonou, 2017) and could be explicitly worked on in interventions.
Another interesting finding of this research emerged in relation to the occupational status of Greek EFL teachers. According to the statistical analyses, no differences were revealed in the resilience levels of those working in the public or the private sector; a surprising fact if the idiosyncratic conditions in each sector are taken into consideration. However, the fact that EFL teachers working in the public sector may be equally resilient or non-resilient with the ones working in the private sector may be explained by the fact that choosing this job was a very conscious decision possibly driven by intrinsic motivation and altruism (Beltman et al., 2011;Gu & Day, 2007;Hong, 2012;Mansfield et al., 2016). It may also be assumed that even though they face different kinds of challenges in terms of their working context, they have developed strategies and supportive mechanisms that help them overcome adversities and be resilient.
Taking the findings of our research into consideration along with suggestions made in related research, it can be assumed that other factors may be affecting resilience more strongly than the contextual and demographic factors examined here.
These factors could relate to motivation (Beltman et al., 2011;Mansfield et al., 2016), self-efficacy (Day, 2008;Gibbs & Miller, 2014;Hong, 2012;Tschannen-Moran &Woolfolk Hoy, 2007), personal agency (Howard & Johnson, 2004), and positive emotions (Gu & Day, 2007;Hong, 2012) as well as being supported by leadership (Beltman et al., 2011;Hong, 2012;Howard & Johnson, 2004) and having strong and genuine relationships with colleagues (Brunetti, 2006;Gu& Day, 2013;Leroux & Théorêt, 2014;Papatriannou & Le Cornu, 2014), pupils and parents (Leroux & Théorêt, 2014). Since demographics, occupational and school and class characteristics were not found to be decisive parameters for teacher resilience, qualitative studies would help in the future to examine the characteristics and idiosyncrasies of individual cases in more depth and explore some of these additional factors such as relational and emotional experiences as experienced by teachers.

Limitations of the Study
The findings of this study have to be interpreted in the light of certain limitations. The first limitation concerns the cross-sectional nature of the research which considers the resilience levels of the participants at the time the research was conducted. A large-scale longitudinal study which can address the variance that may be reported regarding EFL teachers' resilience levels across time as well as the dynamics of the construct could certainly provide a more comprehensive picture of their resilience. Although a one-off cross-sectional survey using self-report data as this one cannot capture the dynamic nature of the construct of resilience, it has provided some preliminary data so that a qualitative study could be developed towards exploring resilience as lived across time in a more nuanced manner.
Secondly, the limited sample size of respondents in some categories (e.g., male participants, substitute teachers) indicates that certain results should be interpreted with caution. Another limitation concerns the data gathered using self-report methods.
Regarding the questionnaire and the use of the TRS specifically, it can be argued that some participants might have answered mechanically or intuitively or provided socially desirable responses. Also, the reported results consider how resilience is perceived by the participants at the time of the completion of the questionnaire and are susceptible to fluctuations if protective or risk factors change. Finally, on a cautionary note, it is important that the parameters referred to in literature as either protective or risk factors need further investigation, especially in the recession period in Greece, to understand how these can be developed in order to enhance EFL teachers' resilience.

Suggestions for Further Research
In view of the research findings, it can be argued that the present study can offer useful suggestions both to the stakeholders involved in education policy design and EFL teachers themselves. Exploring the socio-ecological context of resilient EFL teachers, such as conducting qualitative research with EFL teachers, their colleagues, students, head teachers, family, friends, and parents, may provide fruitful outcomes regarding the factors that can shape a resilient individual. Further research could also seek to identify the specific strategies that resilient EFL teachers employ such as help seeking, problem solving, managing difficult relationships, and seeking rejuvenation and renewal (Castro et al., 2010), maintaining a work-life balance (Johnson et al., 2014;Le Cornu, 2013), engaging in ongoing professional development (O'Sullivan, 2006;Patterson, Collins, & Abbott, 2004),setting emotional boundaries (Hong, 2012),and employing humour (Doney, 2012). Furthermore, programs and schemes for targeted interventions may be developed towards sustaining the levels of resilience among EFL teachers and building up the resilience of those who need further support.
Building communities of practice in the form of small informal peer discussion groups (Karagianni, 2014;Karagianni & Papaefthymiou-Lytra, 2018) or in larger more formal ones (Karavas & Papadopoulou, 2014), in which EFL teachers can communicate their experiences, thoughts, and feelings either synchronously or asynchronously, could strengthen teacher resilience and contribute to their personal and professional wellbeing (Etherington et al., 2020).
In conclusion, this study has attempted to shed some light on Greek EFL teachers' resilience. It is hoped that it has contributed to the understanding of EFL teachers' resilience in a wider sense, but also, locally, in light of the idiosyncrasies of the Greek society and education. Given the challenges language educators face in their daily lives and following the pandemic, it will be even more important to further develop an agenda of resilience research in the field.